Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

We dropped the candy haul off in the car after the parade, and on the way back up the hill to the festival, the boys were holding hands. Without being prompted. My niece pointed it out to me and I snapped a few pictures. My sister wondered aloud if I’d recorded the last time it’ll happen.

Then Saturday night we had a party and there were at least a hundred kids in the pool.

Oh, fine. It was more like ten. It sounded like a hundred, though. They had quite a good time. There were lots of grownups there too, although they generally hollered a lot less.

I’d been watching the weather forecast all week because of the party, but also because we’d been offered Indians tickets on Sunday afternoon. Things were not looking good. For most of the week, the forecast was for rain the entire weekend. Saturday morning looked pretty bad, but things cleared up nicely. The Sunday forecast was still very wet, though.

Sunday morning early I checked and things had improved. Mostly sun and clouds with a probably thunderstorm at 2:00. Well, I thought, if we get a little wet, it’s not the end of the world. Around 9:30, I checked again, and the thunderstorm had shifted to 6:00. I don’t think it actually ever arrived, and the day couldn’t have been prettier.

The boys got duded up in their Indians gear, special not just because it was appropriate to the activity, but because it was all part of a previous gift from our friend John, who was also the benefactor providing the tickets for the game. (As it turned out, the guy on the shirt was pitching and the one on the hat hit a home run as we watched. Serendipity was strong for our outing.)

Not very far into the ballpark, we ran into Brayden, a neighbor and Levi’s classmate. With 30,000 people in the stadium, it wasn’t surprising that we knew a few, but it was a little surprising to actually encounter them in the crowd.

I had to encourage the boys to stop staring and keep walking, especially as we got farther into the park. These are children who still get thrills riding the one-floor escalator at the children’s hospital, remember. There was a lot of looking around to do.

I’d warned them about wandering off or not paying attention as we walked down the sidewalk on our way in. “You need to stick close,” I said. “You’re just not used to crowds like this.” They clearly felt maligned, but quieted down when we got closer to said crowds.

Still, as I craned my neck around someone to see if we’d found section 172, I called Levi by name, and a voice said, “Levi? And are you Elias?”

It was Mike. John had intended to join us, but couldn’t, so he sent someone down to greet us. With goodie bags.

These boys are absolutely not spoiled rotten, and I don’t know why you’d even ask that.

Here they are just before finding our seats …

… and here’s the view we had. Pretty great.

The boys and I missed most of the last two innings to stand in line to run the bases after the game. It was worth it. Paul stayed in the stands and watched the end of the game, and texted to see where we were and when we would appear on the field. We waited in a line stretching several floors up a concrete ramp, descended back down the ramp and then even deeper into the bowels of the stadium, and at one point we had turned around so many times I texted Paul: I could not find my way out of here to save my own life.

About thirty seconds after that, I saw daylight around a corner, and about a minute after that, the boys stepped out onto the field.

We jogged – with pauses to high-five a mascot or two – to third, where there was a bottleneck. That was fine, since it gave me the opportunity to get this shot.

The nice Blue Jays fans behind us took this for us when we’d rounded home and were standing by the dugouts.

Which is where we accidentally backed up and stepped on the grass because we weren’t paying attention and also we didn’t know it was a sin. (They were very nice about telling us to move.) Levi had some questions about this on the way home, probably because because no one in the family golfs and we have no respect for our yard, so the concept of grass with which you must be careful has never come up in his young life.

Paul’s knee was twanging hard, so I offered to get the car and come back. (I was driving anyway. I do cities, he does highways.) The boys wanted to go with me, but came to regret their choice. I walk too fast.

They did make it back to the car with me, where they fell into their seats with abject relief.

It really was quite a weekend.

And, I realized on the way home from the game, it was a really fun one. They are still young enough to be openly thrilled by cool new things, but they’re old enough that sitting in a stadium for the length of a baseball game is no longer an exercise in taking someone to the bathroom every twenty minutes and wondering what on earth you were thinking. They can do the walking, even if they whine. They can be made to carry their own snacks. They can ask questions about what’s happening on the field instead of what they’re going to eat next. (Mostly. Snacks are still very important.)

Going to the ballgame was not a chance for the children to have a new experience and the parents to manage juvenile enjoyment. We all had fun. What a revelation.